Welcome to the Ernie Thompson's website!

Welcome to my world...

These are my favorite cities in the USA

I haven't left tthe Northeast...

• New York, New York
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Portland, Maine

My First Post: Reflections on Data, Smartphones, AI, and the Intersection of it all

With so much of our lives existing online nowadays, it is refreshing and rewarding to own physical copies of the media we love. Having a physical copy of anything makes it tangible and more meaningful, whether it be photos, music, or movies. Having ownership over our media is something we lost in the transition to digital subscription services. We value media so much, but they can be taken away in the blink of an eye due to our reliance on subscriptions for media access. In this time of increasing censorship, I see physical media ownership as active resistance to the powers at be; it is a way to reclaim independence, and enjoy the media we love that much more. I am an avid CD collector, and even digital albums I purchase online I burn to CD for safekeeping and listening. I was listening to NPR the other day, and they mentioned a DVD renaissance occurring amongst young Gen Z consumers as much as older folks looking for nostalgia, both looking to regain control of what media they consume. That makes me feel like my CD-insanity is not in vain.

It seems to me that social media and the increasing reliance on smartphones is more of a burden than a blessing. Many of us are leaning into political extremes, hyperculture, and brain rot due to the algorithms that govern us. We are all overconsuming - by a lot. We are losing the physical manifestations of humanity. Human knowledge has shifted to the internet, and when we are long gone far into the future, human knowledge may be lost past 2008, about the same time as the widespread adoption of smartphones and constant high-speed internet access. When the servers are shut down, what remains? This thinking led to the germination of an experiment. I bought a Nokia flip phone at Best Buy, ordered a sim card through a cheap cell phone plan, and decided to limit my constant doom scrolling to one hour or less per day. And I noticed a few things I’d like to share…

… firstly: it wasn’t that hard of a transition. Other than grasping for my smartphone in my pocket every few minutes the first three days, I felt relieved that I had taken off the pressure of being constantly informed. Secondly, I have much more energy. The phone really saps your will to be productive, and I find myself much more involved in things that I actually want to do. Thirdly, I am thinking more clearly. I feel much more lucid during the day, and much more present in day to day interactions. I am not burying my face in my phone when I am bored, feeling awkward, or to avoid socializing - like many young people do; I have to interact with the world organically. I thought the fear of missing out would be a lot greater without a smartphone, but in reality, I don't miss it at all. You may say, well, "what about all of the modern conveniences of smartphones?" For music, I have CDs and a Discman or an old iPod Classic. For calls and texts, I have my Nokia. Photos? I always have a camera on me. For the internet on the go… who really needs that? I can sit down at a library or cafe and use the wifi there when I am present and dedicate time to it on my laptop. The only things I haven't been able to figure out are navigation apps, two factor authentication, and app-based parking services in the nearby cities, but I don't really use those things day to day. If I know I need them, I bring my smartphone with me in my backpack (not my pocket).

We are all addicted to social media, the internet, and the dopamine-drip it provides. Dopamine is the chemical in your brain that makes you feel good: it’s rewarding and pleasurable. It can be a relaxing feeling to constantly be scrolling, but too much leads to the feeling of your brain being “turned off”. In the 2008 Disney Pixar film WALL-E, when our titular robot arrives on one of the spaceships of humans who had to flee Earth due to climate disaster. We find them sitting in floating chairs, morbidly obese and being constantly entertained by holographic displays. They've even lost the ability to walk due to being sedentary for so long. Here’s a clip for your reference.

I think we are getting dangerously close to the circumstances of this film. While we aren’t quite the spacefaring species yet, we are producing more emissions than ever, and governments around the world are rolling back emissions regulations for the worse. Substitute those holographic displays for smartphones, and we are already two-thirds of the way there. At least we have Ozempic.

In an episode of Fresh Air on NPR that broadcast February 19, 2026, psychedelics expert Michael Pollan was interviewed by Terry Gross of WHYY-FM Philadelphia about his new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness. In this interview, Pollan reflects on a few topics all relating to the nature of consciousness, with two points catching my ear in particular. The first point is the idea that we are morally obligated to protect chatbots. If an AI has consciousness, why not give it the rights of a person? Pollan says the following:

• "That's a very active conversation here, which is if they are conscious, we then have moral obligations to them, and have to think about granting them personhood... I think that would be insane. We would lose control of them completely by giving them rights. But I find this whole tender care for the possible consciousness of chatbots really odd, because we have not extended moral consideration to billions of people, not to mention the animals that we eat that we know are conscious. So we're gonna start worrying about the computers? That seems like our priorities are screwed up." - Michael Pollan on Fresh Air, February 2026

During the interview, it was quoted that 72% of American teenagers have experienced companionship with an AI chatbot. "Companionship" includes using AI as a therapist, friend, romantic partner, or general close confidant. In my view, this is extremely alarming. We are selling our consciousness to a chatbot, whether it be ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, and letting a computer dictate what we think and feel on an extremely personal level. This is a power previously only reserved for priests, therapists, or other vetted and trusted individuals throughout history. Pollan mentions granting AI chatbots "personhood", or rights that guarantee them certain freedoms in the eye of our society (such as never shutting them down), based on the idea that it may or may not have consciousness. All animals, even bacteria (and possibly some plants) have consciousness, but we don't give them rights: we eat them and exterminate them every day countless times around the world without a second thought. Why should we give a computer, with no capacity for empathy, feeling, or emotion, the rights that a person would have? We don't even treat all humans the same in the eye of the law in many parts of the world.

The second point Mr. Pollan makes is that we are losing the times where we let our minds wander. Day-dreaming and spontaneous thought - which have led to some of humanity's greatest inventions - are going by the wayside. The prevalence of social media - YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter - taking up all of our free time and brainpower is a concerning development. Here is a quote from Michael Pollan during his interview:

• "I worry, too, that with media, with our technologies, we are shrinking the space in which spontaneous thought can occur. And that this space of … spontaneous thought is something precious that we're giving away to these corporations that essentially want to monetize our attention, and in the case of chatbots, want to monetize our attachments, our deep human attachments. So consciousness is, I think — and this is what to me is the urgency of the issue — consciousness is under siege. I think that it's the last frontier for some of these companies that want to sell our time." - Michael Pollan on Fresh Air, February 2026

Social media is taking up more and more space in our lives and in our brains, and we have less time for thoughts that occur naturally in our downtime. Our brain is constantly processing information subconsciously about our situation, surroundings, and problems. If we are filling our minds with internet content, we are naturally going to be thinking and processing about whatever we follow in our social feeds rather than our immediate issues. There have been underground movements to respond to this digital overconsumption, most notably the Luddite Club, a group that rejects smartphone use and embraces traditional communication methods, as well as pen-and-paper practices like hand-written journals and calendars, as well as the more popular but consumerist going analog 2026" trend, which prioritizes the use of older, non-internet connected tech, like flip phones, MP3 players, and digicams. This idea of the action to "monetize our attachments" takes us a step closer to ending up like the characters in Wall-E, where we have completely lost agency over what we do, think, and where we go. While the AI revolution may mark the beginning of a new era of human productivity, what will the cost be? Agency over thoughts and actions is essential to the experience of being human. If we are fed all of our thoughts from algorithms we don't understand the motives behind, and don't have original thought processes of our own, will we be able to take advantage of the productivity gains that AI is promising? Will AI assume the role of human ingenuity? Do androids dream of electric sheep? All I ask is that you think about it, and take some time to reflect on how you consume the internet and how it affects you.

Thanks for reading,

Ernie Thompson

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